Missions. It seems like there is a lot of hate towards them. And while most of it could be streamlined further if triggers were slightly changed (I and many other people tried similar things, with more or less success), it's problematic. Now, I think it's a good idea, but badly implemented, and I'm opening this thread here not so much as a complaint toward the current mission system (I highly doubt a 6th expansion and changing this would be too much work for a simple patch), but rather as a "how this could be implemented properly in EUIV", whenever it comes out. Here's my opinion (it's a long opinion, you be warned ):
See, missions are introduced as "God wants us to", or "the nobility wants us to". That's the idea. It is fairly normal that your court, your people, your clergy expects things from you/your country. That's the point of missions, right now, but the way it works seems wrong to me.
We shouldn't be getting one mission at a time... We should just have a screen where we could see "what the nobility wants", "what the clergy prays for", "what our people expects" and whatever driving force there may be behind the throne. And if we fulfilled the goals, the stability of the country, its legitimacy, its economy, etc. would improve, much like when you achieve a mission right now.
Now, on the other hands, I think such a system should overall only give you "internal" bonus, ie no cores on other lands, no or limited prestige boosts (after all, in a conquest, you already gain prestige ), or infamy reduction...
The thing here, is that they could want several stuffs, that may even be contradictory (the nobility might expect us to take Rome for the prestige, while the clergy wants us to secede lands we took from the Pope in an earlier war, for example). We do not "have" to complete it... But if we don't, we might lose stability/... because we would have upset a part of the country.
Now, why would this be better than the current system: first of all: it gives the player more choices (he can choose to focus on a particular need of the country, or a particular class...), allows for more roleplay, and this overall is good.
Second of all, it would allow for more diversity in the missions(the peasants, the nobility, the clergy have different needs and this would allow much more diversity in the missions :"build X" would be viable missions.), and diversity is fun.
Third of all, the rewards in existing missions are sometimes weirdly good (+2 stability??) or weirdly bad (+5% army tradition when I just build 99 regiments??)... This system would allow rewards to be more logical (the peasants being pleased->less WE). It could also be scaled(I'm hoping for scaling in modifiers in EUIV).
4th point: I think this would give missions a logical reason to exist. Right now, it feels like the game pushes me to do something, often for reasons not really clear (well, rarely for logical reasons at least ). And I'm having trouble seeing the link between the mission and the reward. But if you "pretend" it's what some people in your country wants, well then there is a logical reason for gaining bonuses when these goals are fulfilled (again, internal bonus. Gaining cores is nice, but weird )
Last point: missions could be changed without player input. The fact you could have several missions at once, and the fact that they could change automatically, would completely stop annoying missions like "create a huge navy" to be annoying. It would just be one in several missions that you may or may not complete.
So, here's my idea, thanks to those who read it all . Any opinions on this?
edit after some posts: it seems many people are responding to my idea of "no more missions giving cores" negatively because of the historical and practical problems it introduces. I responded to that a bit later in the thread.
See, missions are introduced as "God wants us to", or "the nobility wants us to". That's the idea. It is fairly normal that your court, your people, your clergy expects things from you/your country. That's the point of missions, right now, but the way it works seems wrong to me.
We shouldn't be getting one mission at a time... We should just have a screen where we could see "what the nobility wants", "what the clergy prays for", "what our people expects" and whatever driving force there may be behind the throne. And if we fulfilled the goals, the stability of the country, its legitimacy, its economy, etc. would improve, much like when you achieve a mission right now.
Now, on the other hands, I think such a system should overall only give you "internal" bonus, ie no cores on other lands, no or limited prestige boosts (after all, in a conquest, you already gain prestige ), or infamy reduction...
The thing here, is that they could want several stuffs, that may even be contradictory (the nobility might expect us to take Rome for the prestige, while the clergy wants us to secede lands we took from the Pope in an earlier war, for example). We do not "have" to complete it... But if we don't, we might lose stability/... because we would have upset a part of the country.
Now, why would this be better than the current system: first of all: it gives the player more choices (he can choose to focus on a particular need of the country, or a particular class...), allows for more roleplay, and this overall is good.
Second of all, it would allow for more diversity in the missions(the peasants, the nobility, the clergy have different needs and this would allow much more diversity in the missions :"build X" would be viable missions.), and diversity is fun.
Third of all, the rewards in existing missions are sometimes weirdly good (+2 stability??) or weirdly bad (+5% army tradition when I just build 99 regiments??)... This system would allow rewards to be more logical (the peasants being pleased->less WE). It could also be scaled(I'm hoping for scaling in modifiers in EUIV).
4th point: I think this would give missions a logical reason to exist. Right now, it feels like the game pushes me to do something, often for reasons not really clear (well, rarely for logical reasons at least ). And I'm having trouble seeing the link between the mission and the reward. But if you "pretend" it's what some people in your country wants, well then there is a logical reason for gaining bonuses when these goals are fulfilled (again, internal bonus. Gaining cores is nice, but weird )
Last point: missions could be changed without player input. The fact you could have several missions at once, and the fact that they could change automatically, would completely stop annoying missions like "create a huge navy" to be annoying. It would just be one in several missions that you may or may not complete.
So, here's my idea, thanks to those who read it all . Any opinions on this?
edit after some posts: it seems many people are responding to my idea of "no more missions giving cores" negatively because of the historical and practical problems it introduces. I responded to that a bit later in the thread.
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